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Around 10 years ago, Agol and Krushkal showed that the number of chromatic polynomials $P_{G}$ arising from graphs $G$ on $n$ vertices grows exponentially with $n$, by establishing that the (dual) flow polynomial…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-12-23 Rafael Miyazaki , Cosmin Pohoata , Michael Zheng

We prove that the closure of the real roots of all-terminal reliability polynomials is exactly $[-1,0] \cup \{1\}$, resolving a conjecture of Brown and McMullin and refining the corresponding density result for multigraphs due to Brown and…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-07 Mohamed Omar

The perfect matching index of a cubic graph $G$, denoted by $\pi(G)$, is the smallest number of perfect matchings that cover all the edges of $G$. According to the Berge-Fulkerson conjecture, $\pi(G)\le5$ for every bridgeless cubic…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-08-12 Edita Máčajová , Martin Škoviera

The ordinary generating function of the number of complete subgraphs of $G$ is called a clique polynomial of $G$ and is denoted by $C(G,x)$. A real root of $C(G,x)$ is called a clique root of the graph $G$. Hajiabolhasan and Mehrabadi…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-06-07 Hossein Teimoori Faal

The well-known 5-flow Conjecture of Tutte, stated originally for integer flows, claims that every bridgeless graph has circular flow number at most 5. It is a classical result that the study of the 5-flow Conjecture can be reduced to cubic…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-04-04 Jan Goedgebeur , Davide Mattiolo , Giuseppe Mazzuoccolo

In 1983, Bouchet conjectured that every flow-admissible signed graph admits a nowhere-zero 6-flow. We verify this conjecture for the class of flow-admissible signed graphs possessing a spanning even Eulerian subgraph, which includes as a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-10 Chao Wen , Qiang Sun , Chao Zhang

We prove several theorems concerning Tutte polynomials $T(G,x,y)$ for recursive families of graphs. In addition to its interest in mathematics, the Tutte polynomial is equivalent to an important function in statistical physics, the Potts…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Shu-Chiuan Chang , Robert Shrock

In 1983, A. Bouchet extended W.T. Tutte's notion of nowhere-zero flows to signed graphs, and conjectured that every flow-admissible signed graph has a nowhere-zero 6-flow. In this paper we prove that every flow-admissible signed graph that…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-12-23 Matt DeVos , Kathryn Nurse , Robert Šámal

We prove that a signed graph admits a nowhere-zero $8$-flow provided that it is flow-admissible and the underlying graph admits a nowhere-zero $4$-flow. When combined with the 4-color theorem, this implies that every flow-admissible…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-02-21 Rong Luo , Edita Máčajová , Martin Škoviera , Cun-Quan Zhang

It is well known that the coefficients of the matching polynomial are unimodal. Unimodality of the coefficients (or their absolute values) of other graph polynomials have been studied as well. One way to prove unimodality is to prove…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-10-19 Johann A. Makowsky , Vsevolod Rakita

We show if the flow polynomial of a bridgeless graph G has only integral roots, then G is the dual graph to a planar chordal graph. We also show that for 3-connected cubic graphs, the same conclusion holds under the weaker hypothesis that…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2009-09-11 Joseph P. S. Kung , Gordon F. Royle

The main result of this paper is the following version of the real Jacobian conjecture: "Let $F=(p,q):\R^2\to\R^2$ be a polynomial map with nowhere zero Jacobian determinant. If the degree of $p$ is less than or equal to $4$, then $F$ is…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2022-10-12 F. Braun , B. Oréfice-Okamoto

Let $\Gamma$ be a multigraph with for each vertex a cyclic order of the edges incident with it. For $n \geq 3$, let $D_{2n}$ be the dihedral group of order $2n$. Define $\mathbb{D} := \{(\begin{smallmatrix} 1 & a \\ 0 & 1 \end{smallmatrix})…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-12-04 Bart Litjens

The independence polynomial of a graph $G$ is \[I(G,x)=\sum\limits_{k\ge 0}i_k(G)x^k,\] where $i_k(G)$ denotes the number of independent sets of $G$ of size $k$ (note that $i_0(G)=1$). In this paper we show a new method to prove…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-03-17 Ferenc Bencs

In 1972 Tutte famously conjectured that every 4-edge-connected graph has a nowhere zero 3-flow; this is known to be equivalent to every 5-regular, 4-edge-connected graph having an edge orientation in which every in-degree is either 1 or 4.…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-04-18 Michelle Delcourt , Reaz Huq , Pawel Pralat

Let $\phi_c(G)$ be the circular flow number of a bridgeless graph $G$. In [Edge-colorings and circular flow numbers of regular graphs, J. Graph Theory 79 (2015) 1-7] it was proved that, for every $t \geq 1$, $G$ is a bridgeless…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-04-18 Davide Mattiolo , Eckhard Steffen

Identities obtained by elementary finite Fourier analysis are used to derive a variety of evaluations of the Tutte polynomial of a graph G at certain points (a,b) where (a-1)(b-1) equals 2 or 4. These evaluations are expressed in terms of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-09-20 Andrew J. Goodall

The Tutte polynomial of a graph G is a two-variable polynomial T(G;x,y) that encodes many interesting properties of the graph. We study the complexity of the following problem, for rationals x and y: take as input a graph G, and output a…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2008-07-20 Leslie Ann Goldberg , Mark Jerrum

Let $S,T$ be two distinct finite Abelian groups with $|S|=|T|$. A fundamental theorem of Tutte shows that a graph admits a nowhere-zero $S$-flow if and only if it admits a nowhere-zero $T$-flow. Jaeger, Linial, Payan and Tarsi in 1992…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-09-16 Miaomiao Han , Jiaao Li , Xueliang Li , Meiling Wang

The Tutte polynomial of a graph is a two-variable polynomial whose zeros and evaluations encode many interesting properties of the graph. In this article we investigate the zeros of the Tutte polynomials of graphs, and show that they form a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-09-01 Seongmin Ok , Thomas J. Perrett